Newbie in Need

[@pat]

I recently became the proud owner of a refurbished Mavic air. I purchased the drone from amazons renewed program. After logging only 6 short hours and thinking I new what I was doing I took my drone on a backpacking trip and long story short, the drone got wet. It fell from the air into about 6 inches of fresh water. I recovered the drone after about 30 long seconds and immediately pulled the battery and started drying it off. When I got home I put it in rice for three days. Today I turned it on. It started up like normal but the indicator light began flashing yellow and I couldn’t connect to the drone. The drone also will not beep regardless of how long I depress the indicator button. Starting to think the unit is fried. Wondering if anyone has any recommendations or can point me in the right direction on where to go from here.

 

[RTKD]

Did you try hooking it up to assistant to see if it comes up? May have just lost your radio link. BTW, I would't trust or charge a battery that's been underwater. It could swell and catch fire worst case scenario

 

[@pat]

Nope, first I’ve heard of that. I’ll check it out.
And thanks for the heads up on the battery. I’ll probably can the one that got wet and stick to my other two.
Thanks brother.

 

[bumper]

Do not power it up yet (or again). You need to submerge it in distilled water, as the "fresh" water is went into has lots of dissolved minerals in it - these were left behind in the circuitry and on the pc boards when you dried it. Note that fresh water conducts electricity due to those contaminants. Distilled water does not. After it's thoroughly rinsed, do the drying thing again. Desiccant is better than dry rice, BTW, and putting it in a warm airflow can help too.

 

[MAvic_South_Oz]

Welcome to the forum @Pat . . . not a happy intro, but all too common as you will see if you stick around / read here a bit.

I take it no DJI Care Refresh or other State Farm etc insurance ?

Try trouble shooting it, google those status light patterns / symptoms, but yeah, don't use that battery could do a lot more damage electronically, and / or cause a lipo fire (bad news).

Ok, 3 days in rice, it is really too late to do anything with it mate.
Washing / rinsing / drying it out now would be too late, whatever damage is done / continuing to be done is probably too late to stop.

Best to get it into a repair shop asap, get them to pull it down and see if worth trying a save.

This sort of incident is really unnerving, would you think your computer would be ok mid to long term after being underwater for any amount of time ?
Drones are mini computers nowadays, the electronics is fine and sensitive in them.
It would be very hard to trust the drone again, especially using it where a loss of control could end badly.

It's a tough learning curve.

Talk to a member here @djidroneservice < free shipping to, assessment, return if you don't want to proceed / unviable etc . . . they sell drones too, may have an aircraft only to sell you.
Or google Thunderdrones.
See who is closer / confident to take a look.

Don't bother with DJI, they simply won't touch a drone that been in water . . . for good reason in general, they can't afford long term liability.

 

[@pat]

Do not power it up yet (or again). You need to submerge it in distilled water, as the "fresh" water is went into has lots of dissolved minerals in it - these were left behind in the circuitry and on the pc boards when you dried it. Note that fresh water conducts electricity due to those contaminants. Distilled water does not. After it's thoroughly rinsed, do the drying thing again. Desiccant is better than dry rice, BTW, and putting it in a warm airflow can help too.

Do not power it up yet (or again). You need to submerge it in distilled water, as the "fresh" water is went into has lots of dissolved minerals in it - these were left behind in the circuitry and on the pc boards when you dried it. Note that fresh water conducts electricity due to those contaminants. Distilled water does not. After it's thoroughly rinsed, do the drying thing again. Desiccant is better than dry rice, BTW, and putting it in a warm airflow can help too.

Excellent. Thank you for the information. I’ll give it a shot. Going to feel weird soaking this thing on purpose!

 

[@pat]

Welcome to the forum @Pat . . . not a happy intro, but all too common as you will see if you stick around / read here a bit.

I take it no DJI Care Refresh or other State Farm etc insurance ?

Try trouble shooting it, google those status light patterns / symptoms, but yeah, don't use that battery could do a lot more damage electronically, and / or cause a lipo fire (bad news).

Ok, 3 days in rice, it is really too late to do anything with it mate.
Washing / rinsing / drying it out now would be too late, whatever damage is done / continuing to be done is probably too late to stop.

Best to get it into a repair shop asap, get them to pull it down and see if worth trying a save.

This sort of incident is really unnerving, would you think your computer would be ok mid to long term after being underwater for any amount of time ?
Drones are mini computers nowadays, the electronics is fine and sensitive in them.
It would be very hard to trust the drone again, especially using it where a loss of control could end badly.

It's a tough learning curve.

Talk to a member here @djidroneservice < free shipping to, assessment, return if you don't want to proceed / unviable etc . . . they sell drones too, may have an aircraft only to sell you.
Or google Thunderdrones.
See who is closer / confident to take a look.

Don't bother with DJI, they simply won't touch a drone that been in water . . . for good reason in general, they can't afford long term liability.

Hey there and thank you for response!

Negative on the insurance.. Doh!

I’ve been trying to do my due diligence on troubleshooting research. Just a lot of information to sift through with these machines. I’ll be happy to turn this thing over to a professional if they tell me it actually has a shot at being fixed right.

Thanks for the source recommendations. I’ll look into those. Hopefully they can get this fixed until I work up the courage to ask my wife for another drone haha.

i wasnt very hopeful for DJI.

Thank you again for your thoughtful response!

 

[Medley]

I recently became the proud owner of a refurbished Mavic air. I purchased the drone from amazons renewed program. After logging only 6 short hours and thinking I new what I was doing I took my drone on a backpacking trip and long story short, the drone got wet. It fell from the air into about 6 inches of fresh water. I recovered the drone after about 30 long seconds and immediately pulled the battery and started drying it off. When I got home I put it in rice for three days. Today I turned it on. It started up like normal but the indicator light began flashing yellow and I couldn’t connect to the drone. The drone also will not beep regardless of how long I depress the indicator button. Starting to think the unit is fried. Wondering if anyone has any recommendations or can point me in the right direction on where to go from here.

For what it's worth, my Air was immersed in shallow (fresh) water for about 3.5 minutes about six weeks ago due to an unfortunate error on the pilot's (my) part. I took the top shell off and partially disassembled it, blew out the innards thoroughly and left it opened to dry for a week. It has flown as new since then. Note that I also intentionally flew the first few flights with the battery that had taken the bath as well. It behaves as new also.

You may want to consider stripping it down to check for visible corrosion or debris in the electronics and give it a good scrub with an old toothbrush. No promises, but there is hope for your little friend.

 

[MAvic_South_Oz]

Hey there and thank you for response!

Negative on the insurance.. Doh!

I’ve been trying to do my due diligence on troubleshooting research. Just a lot of information to sift through with these machines. I’ll be happy to turn this thing over to a professional if they tell me it actually has a shot at being fixed right.

Thanks for the source recommendations. I’ll look into those. Hopefully they can get this fixed until I work up the courage to ask my wife for another drone haha.

i wasnt very hopeful for DJI.

Thank you again for your thoughtful response!

No probs, as you'll see a fair bit from various similar threads on the forum, some get theirs to fly again.
For how long, that's the key.

If splashed, you have a good chance at long term success, no need to flush thoroughly etc, but opened up some disassembly etc will help any very minor water ingress to be patted down and to dry out.

That would be the case with an immersion like yours too, need to get it open.

FWIW, here's what I'd do.

This is about all you can do for any water type, fresh is obviously less problematic corrosion wise.
If salt, then I'd literally pull the battery and put it and the drone into a bucket of fresh, any type of clear, water . . . tap water, rainwater, even fresh creek water, get that salt wet and as rinsed out as best / fast possible.
(In reality, if mine went into the sea and recoverable but wet through, it'd be never flown again.)

So . . .
Get drone out of water asap, towel down, remove battery asap.
(For the sake of brevity, assume each step also carries the term asap attached.)
Put battery somewhere safe outside, don't power on.
Get to your workbench, open up the body as best possible, flush with copious amounts of distilled water.
Then flush with copious amounts of isopropyl alcohol, this displaces the distilled water and dries out / evaporates very fast.
Put the drone and any components into a suitable size sealable tupperware or similar tub, with a good amount of silica gel decisent (separate drone from silica gel with a cloth, tea towel etc).
Leave for 3 - 4 days.
Pack up and send to a repair centre for a thorough pull down and check.

How feasible is all this ?
Access to those materials and gear ?
How fast you can get this done ?

Distilled water is readily available at most supermarkets etc.
Isopropyl is almost impossible to find around the World now (an excellent germ killer, someone's hoarding it !).
Silica Gel (maybe a kg / 2 pounds of it ?) needs good long term storage, container of right size on hand, etc.

I'm certainly not prepped for the above job.

Hey, really hope you can get a positive result, you can message that forum sponsor (@djidroneservice ) or they'll pop by here tagged, or google thunderdrones, either should be able to give you the best advice after inspecting.